


Joy

by pigeon_hawk



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bureaucracy, Fluff, Love, M/M, Memory Loss, Some smut but honestly, mostly just cuteness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-11-05 06:27:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17913557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pigeon_hawk/pseuds/pigeon_hawk
Summary: Harry is happy. Sort of.





	Joy

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own anything relating to Harry Potter - except in the sense that we all own an imaginary corner of the fictional universes we inhabit as readers, struggling to build a reality that's worth living in and that maybe has dragons in it.

Harry was happy all the time. He was happy to meet his friends for breakfast at the café down the block, happy to help with fundraisers for the War Orphans' Fund, happy to be home, happy just to be alive. He was absolutely bubbling over with excitement about the Auror training program, to the point that he had completely memorized the trainee handbook, front to back, a full nine weeks before the program was scheduled to start. When Hermione found out about this she broke down in the kitchen and sobbed at him for fifteen minutes, wiping her eyes on the dish towels and fussing over the tea. She'd never been so proud.

People would ask how he was doing, whether out of courtesy or genuine concern, and the answer was always the same: "Better and better," he'd say with a smile like firelight, warm and welcoming and just soft enough to reassure.

  
Two weeks before the end of summer he stopped by the Ministry to finish some pre-entry paperwork. It was nothing important. They'd told him it could wait until the first day of training, but he wanted to get everything lined up before the big day. It felt good to be prepared - to feel like his life, for once, was unfolding according to his own plan, and not just a series of near-death experiences. 

"Mr. Potter!" squeaked a thin, elderly witch in glittering gold cat-eye glasses. Her eyes flicked back and forth between Harry and the heavy doors behind her, like a dog that had torn apart a mattress and was waiting to see if its owner would notice. "How are you, dearie?"

"Fine," he said, giving her a smile like melted sunshine.  "Better and better."

She licked her lips and stretched them into a wide, terrified smile. "Wonderful." 

There were voices coming down the hall. The door behind her creaked and she whipped around in her chair, quick for someone who had to be at least in her seventies, and cringed from head to toe as Draco Malfoy shuffled through the door with a firm hand gripping the back of his neck, hands bound behind his back. He looked up and blinked slowly, like he was trying to get used to the light. His eyes went wide. He tried to say something - lips seeming to part and then draw together again to form the shape of a word - but the sound that came out was the scrape of dull fingernails against a doorframe, the murmur of fresh panic.

Harry narrowed his eyes. "Dierdre," he said to the woman, voice gone dangerously calm. "What the fuck have you done?"

 

***

 

Harry awoke with the overwhelming feeling that his whole life was starting afresh. He hummed a little tune in the shower as he rubbed conditioner into his roots, bouncing on the balls of his feet and smiling at the sloppy line drawings of kittens that tumbled up and over the surface of his shower curtain. He was happy to be alive. He was lucky to have a future.

"Jesus mother of cocks!" Ron yelped, yanking back the curtain and then covering his eyes when he realized what he'd done. He had been experimenting with Muggle curse words lately. He hadn't quite got the hang of it.

"Merlin! Sorry. Sorry! We were just so worried about you, we'd checked here three times already, I didn't expect to actually find you!" He dragged the curtain awkwardly back into place and stood outside, and somehow Harry could _hear_ himblushing.

Harry stood still, hands frozen mid-shampoo, baffled. "You -" he began, addressing himself to the kittens. "Ron, are you all right?"

"Mate, you've been missing for two days, course I'm not all right! Mum's gone round the twist. It was like Fred all over again," which made Harry feel like he was about to be sick, but it still didn't make sense.

"Ron, I'm fine - I'm sorry, I just -" but as he switched off the tap, his thoughts fell neatly into place. He reached out blindly for his towel and Ron handed it over. "But I don't really know what you're talking about," he grumbled. "I was at your flat yesterday till six."

"That was Saturday, Harry! Fuck's sake, we don't mind if you need to disappear once in a while, but  _tell_  somebody next time, will you?" Harry stepped out of the shower and sat down heavily on the lid of the toilet. He scanned Ron's face for signs of - he didn't know what - and found only relief, mingled with something vaguely resentful about the mouth. "Ron, everything is _fine_. Better than fine. Are you sure  _you're_  OK?"

Ron just nodded at him, tight-lipped, and went to floo Hermione.

Fifteen minutes later Harry had eaten an entire packet of biscuits by himself while Hermione fussed over him and made him owl everyone he knew to tell them he wasn't dead.

"I don’t know what could have happened," she said, shaking her head and looking him over for the tenth time. "Let's just have a look." But _finite incantatem_ only made the antique clock on Harry's mantelpiece collapse into a heap of rusted gears, since apparently it had been held together by a combination of patchwork spells and positive thinking. She tried _revelio_ as well, but nothing turned up. Nothing significant, anyway. “I mean, there are a few residual spells from when you were in Wales – nothing important.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Do you suppose you could have been drugged? I don’t know how to look for Muggle intoxicants, but it-“

“Sorry, I need you  _repeat_  that last bit.”

“Oh – you know, like – illegal substances. Drugs.”

Harry ground his teeth and looked at the ceiling. “ _No_ , the bit about – did you say I’d been to  _Wales_?”

The clock made one last, valiant effort and tipped itself over onto the carpet, springs and bits of turtle shell scattering in all directions. “Why are you both  _looking_  at me like that?”

"It's like he’s been Obliviated," she said, horrified. She ran through her diagnostic spells again three times just to be sure. "It doesn’t make any sense! There’s nothing there that could - _oh_ ," she said slowly, her expression growing dark. "Oh, no, no no no." 

"What?"

" _Extergio Luto?_ ” she said in a whisper, whipping her wand through the air in a large, neat circular motion, and Harry collapsed on the floor with a scream.

"Joseph's bloody knees," said Ron, which – under the circumstances – seemed appropriate. 

  
***  
  
“I think I’ve done something to his brain.”

Harry pushed her face away with one hand, begging the walls to sit still and give him a minute to breathe. He was lying sideways on the couch, knees pulled up to his chest, relieved to have simply stopped vomiting. Everything ached. “Merlim,” he said, tongue thick and heavy as he ran it across the roof of his mouth, tasting mud. When he put his fingers to his lips they came away covered in slick white clay.

“Harry,” she said, sat rigidly on the floor beside him, fists clenched in the short twisted fibers of the carpet. “How are you?”

This surprised a giggle from him, wretched and limp as he was feeling at that moment. “I think I vomited into my nose,” he said, and brought one shaking hand up to rub his throat. He felt like he had as a child when he'd gotten laryngitis and had to stay his cupboard for two weeks straight because Petunia was terrified of Dudley contracting whatever had caused it. It'd been lonely, but at least he'd gotten out of doing chores for a while. 

“Yes, but how  _are_  you?”

He blew his nose on his sleeve and coughed on the sharp taste of dirt. “How do I  _look_?”

She made a noise of irritation and reached out with one hand to grip his shoulder, forcing him to look at her. “You  _look_  terrible.  _How are you_ , Harry?”

He looked into her face and let the words sink in. “Oh,” he said. He slumped against the foot of the couch. “I'm.” He swallowed, wanting to force the words out, wanting desperately to keep them in. “I guess I've been… awful… mostly. For as long as I remember?”

Hermione's face relaxed, and she scooted forward on her knees before putting her arms around him and pressing his face into her shoulder. “Yes. It's all right. I know."  
  
***  
  
"I mean, it's - whitewashing is just a standard privacy charm, isn't it? It’s used all the time when people have psychiatric care in a group setting. It sort of… whites out some of the more private information from the other patients. Not enough that you'd forget anything vital, just - you know - anything really confidential gets a bit fuzzy in your memory. They would have cast it when you left the rehabilitation centre, Harry. That's why it didn't seem out of place."   
  
Harry looked up at her, his brow wrinkling. "The what?"  
  
"Shitting shit," Hermione hissed, and it occurred to Harry that maybe it wasn't Ron's fault his cursing was coming along so poorly. "You still don’t remember Wales?” Harry shook his head, embarrassed for some reason. “There must be more than one layer of memory suppression. I'm  _really_  sorry about this, Harry."  
  
After the fourth purge - a nasty one, every mouthful of silt coming up mixed with bile and streaks of blood - Harry looked around himself, bright-eyed, and started quietly hyperventilating. His throat was useless and swollen at that point, but something had changed in him as suddenly as a light being switched on. He tore apart the kitchen drawers looking for the last functioning writing implement in the house. When he finally found it he couldn't find any parchment, and so he scrawled in black permanent marker all over his chequered pink tile countertop, "The Ministry have Draco. They've done something to him. We have to find him  _now_."  
  
***  
  
After the second purge, memories had started to surface like dirty leaves churned up inside a pool that had just been disturbed. They were disorganized and out-of-focus, but the feeling that spread through Harry's limbs at their sudden appearance was more than enough to make him blush.

Some of the memories were images, but quite a few of them were more… tactile. There was the brush of someone's fingers, soft and teasing against the hairs of his inner thigh; the weight of another body on top of him, groaning softly and grinding against him in wordless desperation, his mouth guiding him slowly across a smooth expanse of skin. He remembered silver eyes seeking him out across a crowded room, lighting up when they found him, and the rustle of fabric as secrets were spilled in the dark, passed back and forth like whiskey in a flask, leaving him giddy with want and possibility and confusion.  
  
He knew now that he had spent eight months at a mental health facility for witches and wizards in southern Wales. He had been depressed - not exactly suicidal, because death had seemed unappealing after his first taste if it, but unable to sleep, to think, to make himself eat, until his friends had begged him to go for treatment. He hadn't completely forgotten his time at Tŷ Gardd, but large parts of it had grown so indistinct as to be meaningless – he couldn’t attach them to real events or real people. Memories started coming sharply into focus now, free of context and in no particular order. Some were mundane things he had lost track of - hours spent walking the gardens at night, rain-soaked broom flights, gallons of tea drunk in quiet company with the other patients - but his memory had been painted over more carefully in other places, like a wall that had had plaster applied to all its little nicks and dents before the primer was used, and nearly all of these places seemed to hide the same thing: Draco Malfoy. 

There was another sensation, too. At first it had only registered as pain, as though something had burrowed down inside his chest, slicing away at soft tissue and grinding against bone until it had made its nest somewhere in the space just above his stomach, but as the memories floated up toward consciousness they started to make a kind of sense together, and the sensation grew less sharp - more of a dull ache than a stabbing pain. The memory of pain once the injury had healed.

After the fourth purge – or during it, really, every heaving breath a terrifying and near-religious experience at this point – the memories resolved into a single clear recollection of himself, naked and flushed and draped over Draco's warm body, limbs wrapped around him in passionate embrace while he whispered soft, golden words into Draco's ear. He watched as light bloomed between their chests, and oh - God. Harry recognized the spell right away. He'd seen it at Bill and Fleur's wedding. 

There'd been a great deal more clothing and a pair of silver rings involved in their ceremony, but he had known, instinctively, that the rings were just a formality. He had wanted what they had, then, wanted to find someone who could fight with him and help him sleep and know him without shying away, and had worried that they didn't exist - or worse, that he would die before he got the chance to meet them. He'd always known that it couldn't be Ginny, as much as he might have wanted it to be. 

He realized with anguish that the thing that had felt broken inside him all these months had not been his heart or his mind or even his grip on reality, but a  _promise_. It didn't matter that it seemed impossible - he'd done stupider, more impulsive things in his life than fall in love, and it even made a strange kind of sense given the amount of time he'd spent staring at Malfoy's stupid hair all these years. He had been aware, even before huge gaps appeared in his memory, that Malfoy had been working to repair some of the damage his family had done - pouring money into relief funds, rebuilding damaged facilities, providing emergency housing for Muggle children and families displaced by the war. He remembered wondering, at the time, if any of it was sincere, or if Malfoy was just trying to keep his arse out of Azkaban. It didn't matter that almost their entire relationship up to that point was a mystery to him, because Harry kept his promises. It was one of the only things about himself he'd always been sure about, one of the only real virtues he'd clung to in his moments of despair and self-loathing. He might be a murderer and a disappointment, used up and broken and unlovable, but he did what he said he'd do, even when it meant walking right up to his own death and taking it by the hand.  
  
***  
  
This was an odd conversation to carry on in writing. Harry was frantic. He kept peppering his notes with exclamation points and emphatic underlines. He was also busy slurping down mug after mug of slippery elm bark tea - Hermione's idea - and working hard to suppress a gag with every sip. It was like drinking hot liquid snot, but apparently it did wonders for the vocal cords.  
  
"I don't see why you're in such a panic over this. It's  _Malfoy_." Ron scrunched up his nose in disgust before turning around to rifle through Harry's refrigerator looking for literally anything with cheese on it. So far Harry hadn't got up the courage to tell his friends exactly why he had to find Draco. He could hardly explain it to himself. He wondered whether Hermione already suspected something, actually, from the looks she was giving him. Maybe he should just tell her and get it over with.  
  
"Ron!" She sighed as Harry whipped a wordless stinging hex at his friend's ear.  
  
"Oi! What was that for?"  
  
"Well,  _first_  of all whatever they're doing to Malfoy sounds incredibly illegal. Look at the lengths they've gone to to hide it - erasing Harry's memory multiple times, misuse of medical spells, possible kidnapping - who knows what else! What kind of Auror are you shaping up to be?"  
  
"Ugh…" said Ron, stuffing a bit of stale cake into his mouth. "All right. When you say it like  _that_."  
  
"And secondly -" She rolled her eyes and glanced at the parchment Harry had just handed her. Wher eyes fell on the last sentence, she seized up. "Oh," she said, but quietly. She swallowed, blushing, and set the parchment down. "That's - yes, that... er. Should. Help. With locating him! I imagine."  
  
Harry smiled at her, miserably, and shrugged. At least she hadn't made a scene. Maybe if he'd told someone about it in the first place his friends would have noticed that his memory had been altered. She shook her head as if trying dislodge something, and turned to Ron.

“Ron, er... could you just run back to our flat and get me that book on location spells? By  _Morag Mulcifer._ It’s blue and silver, should be on the desk in the living room.”

“Oh. Right. No problem. Ooh, can I stop and make a sandwich while I’m there? No offense, Harry, but your kitchen is useless.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, irritated. “You don’t need permission for sandwiches.”

Harry tapped his pen on the parchment in front of him.

 _Whipped_ , it said. It was underlined twice. Hermione looked at her hands but didn't bother to argue.

Ron, apparently eager for sandwiches, kissed her on the top of her head, stuffed a sad-looking cheese sandwich in his mouth, and was gone in under a minute.

“Go on,” said Hermione, shaking her head impatiently. “Tell me everything.”

 

* * *

 

He told her as much as he felt comfortable telling. "I just don’t think it’s safe to scrub every layer at once, Harry. It seems like the spell’s been cast repeatedly over a period of several weeks – possibly longer. And - I don’t want to be unkind, I can see that you've become... emotionally involved... somehow -" it sounded like the words had been wrung out of her "- but you must realize what this looks like.” When Harry didn't respond, she sighed. “The person who did this would almost certainly have erased any memory of you seeing them so you wouldn’t be able to tell anyone what was happening. So when you say the memories are  _all_  about Malfoy _.._.”

He could see how she'd come to that conclusion, but that wasn't it. He knew that wasn't it.

“What if this ritual was entered into against your will? You could have been temporarily incapacitated, or doused with some kind of potion, or-”   
  
_No_ , he wrote.

Harry swallowed, remembering the slide of Draco's bare skin, the taste of sweat on his tongue and a smell like… rosewater and cardamom, maybe? Sweetly aromatic, and he bit the inside of his cheek, worried his thoughts were spelled out clearly on his face. He fidgeted with the salt cellar, face hot, avoiding Hermione’s gaze. 

“Harry, how can you be _sure_? We need to go over every detail so –” She stopped when he shook his head.  _It looked_ – he wrote, ears burning, trying desperately to think of a way to reassure her without providing any details at all – _extremely, and explicitly, voluntary_. Hermione, rather than responding to this declaration, wisely pretended to choke on her biscuit.

When Ron came back she’d recovered herself well enough to lecture them both a little.

"It's fine, Harry. You’ll have to tell him sometime.”

“Tell him what?”

Harry turned slowy, suddenly awkward. Hermione prodded him. “Go  _on_.” Harry absolutely did not want to talk to Ron about his romantic entanglements. Even now, with his two best friends living together, the three of them had never broached the subject in any substantive way - which was how he'd always hoped it could stay. Harry was happy for them. He just didn't want to  _hear_ about it.

Harry stood up and offered Ron his wrist. 

Ron seemed puzzled for a moment until he looked more closely. "Mate. Is that what it looks like?” Harry nodded minutely, staring at the marking - partly because it was beautiful, and he couldn't figure out how he'd failed to notice it all these months, and partly because as long as he and Ron were looking at his wrist, they didn't have too look at each other.

If you concentrated, you could just make out a narrow stripe of Latin etched into the skin like a cord wrapped around his wrist, off-white against tan and rendered in a delicate, curling script. It was Draco’s handwriting, Harry realized. “Bugger.” Ron just stood there, mouth open, staring like he’d never seen magic before in his life, and Harry wondered irritably how long it was going to take his friend to put together what it meant that they were desperately seeking Draco Malfoy, and that Harry had apparently gotten... ugh... _married,_ in secret. Sometimes he could be so –

“What did I tell you?" When Harry looked up, Ron was grinning like a maniac.

“Honestly, Ron, this is hardly –“

"Five bloody years I been sayin' it, and you were always telling me not to make assumptions. Well, look what we got here!”

" _Ron._ ”

Something twisted in his expression, then, and he looked back at Harry gloomily. "Did you have to  _marry_ him, though? I mean he's fit, I suppose, if you like that sort of thing, but do you really want to be going round his mum's place for Christmas?” A look crossed his face like he’d found a dead cat laid out on the kitchen table. “When did you even run into him? You’ve only been back three months.”

“He met him in _Wales_ ,” said Hermione, with an undertone that Harry did not particularly like.

“Oh, right. Always knew he was mental.” He looked at Harry and added, hurriedly, “Sorry, mate. Not  _you_. Anybody'd be a bit of a mess after what's happened to you, but I'll bet he's _properly_ mental."

“Honestly, Ron, you're about as tactful as a doorstop.”

“What's wrong with him, anyway? Is it something humiliating?”

Harry glared.   _I don’t remember,_  he wrote, and held the note up in front of his chest like a shield. But that wasn’t entirely true, either. He remembered being woken up by someone screaming and clawing at the bed sheets. Some of his memories took on new meanings as he tried to organize them now, tried to remember things that Draco had told him about in confidence.  _Panic attacks,_ he added to the bottom of the note, but he knew it was more than that. Draco had been on 24 hour supervision at one point. There had been a mind-healer at the bedside at all hours of the night, which he'd hated because it meant that Harry had to sleep in his own bed. Harry remembered things that he had no right to tell.  _Anyway._  he added. _Maybe I like mental._ 

“That explains Ginny,” Ron muttered to himself. “But honestly, there probably weren't a lot of options in the looney bin. You'd just worked out you were gay, hadn't you? It doesn't have to be permanent, just because you - erm." He gestured lamely at Harry's entire person, as if to say, _just because you've done something impulsive and stupid. Again._   

But Harry shook his head, laughing stupidly, and reached a hand out for parchment and pen. He'd expected this to go so much worse. Now that it was all out in the open, he felt happier - almost calm, in spite of the anxiety he still felt about finding Draco.

 _Maybe if this one doesn’t work out_.  

Ron sighed. “Better find the bastard, then.” Hermione glared at him and snatched the book out of his hand.

The spell they needed was on page eighty-four. “It’s a stable link,” she explained, worrying the nail on her left thumb. “The, um – binding. Either of you can open it, but most of the time it just lays dormant. It’s mostly symbolic.”

_What happens when we open it?_

“I’m not really sure? It’ll tell us where he’s at, somehow. It looks like it's also used for communication, but I think that takes practice. The text is a bit sparse.  _Mulcifer’s_  compendiums tend to be more like indexes than in-depth guides, you know.”

Harry did not know, but he turned the book around to read it properly. The spell seemed simple enough. When he mouthed the words the cord around his wrist tightened very slightly and lit up, as though a thin shaft of sunlight had opened up in the window coverings and settled itself on him. The muscles in his chest relaxed. It was almost like sliding into a bath, the scent of soap and spices calling up the memory of Draco's skin, and he felt, suddenly, happy. It reminded him of the feeling he'd had that morning when he woke up - joyful, purposeful, almost electric. He noticed a faint pressure on his fingertips, then, as though he was on the threshold of a hidden room and he only needed to pull the curtain aside. He reached for the invisible boundary and yanked it aside, ever so gently, curving his fingers in mid-air as though gripping the heavy fabric.

There was a window.

"Looks a bit depressing,” said Ron, peering over his shoulder through the little patch of elsewhere that had opened up in the middle of Harry's living room. The image was blurry at the edges, like something seen through layers of water, but he could make out some details - brick walls, gilt-framed portraits of wizards in varied and eccentric states of historical dress, notebook paper zipping through the air on its way to destinations unknown. “Hold on,” said Hermione, frowning. “That’s the _Ministry._ Why would they have him there?”

Harry had imagined breaking into a house somewhere and carrying Draco out bodily, but the Ministry would be full of witches and wizards now, all going about their work. Did Harry know for sure that what was happening to Draco was illegal? It had looked bad, but then he’d only seen him for a few seconds. He had fallen in love with Draco - he could deal with that. But how much did he actually know about him? He hadn't turned out to be a murderer, but that didn't make him innocent. 

 _Who can we trust at the Ministry?_  he wrote.

"Shacklebolt, I guess." Ron looked uncertain. "If you'd asked me this morning I'd've said anybody, but with what happened to you, Harry, it's a bit hard to say."

But the answer was obvious. Harry willed his vocal cords to vibrate, at first getting nothing but wheezing and scratching for his efforts, but after the third attempt he managed to whisper - "Arthur." Ron pursed his lips and nodded. "Right!" he said. "Brilliant. Dad knows everything that goes on at the Ministry. Bet he can get us in under the radar and everything." He frowned. "Don't know what he'll say when he knows it's for  _Malfoy_.”  
  
"It's not  _for_  Malfoy," Hermione chided. "It's for  _Harry_. Tell him to come right away if he can.”

Ron groaned and muttered something under his breath before slouching away to owl his father. It was 7:33 in the morning, and Harry was already exhausted. Hermione squeezed Harry’s arm. “Don’t worry,” she said, sounding doubtful. “We’ll get him out.” 

 

***

 

Mr. Weasley, frowned at them, shaking his head. "I had a  _feeling_  something like this was going on."  
  
_What_? How could Mr. Weasley have known anything? He hadn't even told Mr. and Mrs. Weasley he was gay. They were still hinting about him and Ginny getting back together, even though that was about as likely as a hippogriff giving birth in their living room.   
  
"Did you really?" Hermione said, horrified.  
  
"Institutional abuse,” said Mr. Weasley, grave as anything. “I heard they'd brought that Malfoy boy in for interviewing, of course, but it seems like it’s gone on a bit longer than it ought to - and not necessarily through standard channels, if you see what I’m saying. There's bending the rules, and then there's  _stepping over the line_. Erasing a wizard's memory without due process is a serious violation. Draco’s quite lucky to have you three as friends."  
  
"Er… Yeah," said Ron unconvincingly.  
  
"We'll need to come up with a plan,” said Hermione. “I've got enough Polyjuice potion for one of us to get in, but we’ll need you to bring us some usable samples. There’s additional security all throughout that part of the building, too, which will complicate things. Maybe we could put a trace on him and break him out of wherever he's being held overnight!"

Mr. Weasley's eyes had gone wide. "My goodness, now, this isn’t a _bank heist_. No, my dear, absolutely not! You’ve got to go through the proper _departments_. If Draco really is at the Ministry, as you say he is, then there’s no point trying to break him out. No - we'll do things the right way. You just leave it to me."  
  
Ten minutes later they arrived at the Regulatory Offices for the Oversight of Investigative Personnel and settled in to wait. It took forty minutes for their number to be called, and then they were handing over a seventeen-page-long petition that Mr. Weasley had somehow managed to fill out in triplicate whilst perched on one of the tiny green stools spread randomly throughout the office, each of which seemed to have been designed less for comfort than to serve as a warning to loiterers. He’d already sent out three separate owls for supporting documentation, and arrived at the counter looking cheerful and unhurried as though he'd just come in from lunch.  
  
"Gladys," he said, beaming as he handed over the forms. "How’ve you been getting on with those miniature tentaculae? Everett's been giving us all his regular updates. You're quite a celebrity in 17G."  
  
The woman's expression did not shift in the slightest, but she glanced down at the forms. "These sorts of requests are typically filled within twelve to fifteen days of receipt, Weasley." Her voice was deep and gravelly. If Harry hadn't been looking at her, he might have thought she was a man. Possibly a small bear.  
  
"Thank you," Mr. Weasley said, smiling. "That should be fine."  _Fifteen_   _days_? Harry wanted to scream at the woman, shake her, explain the situation, but Mr. Weasley gave him a  _look_ , so he patiently gritted his teeth.  
  
"You've not included the name of the officer under review."  
  
"Haven’t I?" There was a momentary pause, as though something important were being deliberately left unsaid, and Harry wondered for some reason if she was going to send them back to the start of the queue. She squinted at Mr. Weasley then – and _smirked_. The expression was so brief and so minute that Harry almost didn’t believe it’d happened, except for a feeling of giddiness and confusion in his chest. Gladys reached for a stamp hidden behind the counter. She pressed it smoothly to the upper right corner of the form and handed it back. "Expedited," it said, in glittering purple ink. She glanced over Harry’s shoulder to the room beyond. "Fifty-three?"  
  
They headed for the door.  
  
"I have no idea what just happened," said Ron, and his father sighed.   
  
"A bureaucracy, Ron, is like an obstacle course. You can keep butting you head against it for years, cursing every obstruction that appears between you and your destination, or you can accept its little eccentricities and learn to navigate it."

"We know where he's _at_ , though. Why can't we just go to the right floor and demand to see him?"

Mr. Weasley puffed up his cheeks, whistling softly as he let out the air. "Impossible. We'd never make it past the secretarial pool. Floor 11 is notorious for its indecipherable workflow patterns, we'd be redirected to 17 different sub-managers and made to fill out at least a dozen forms before they'd let us past the first waiting room. Believe me. This is the _easy_ way in."

"All right, but-"

Floor 2B was Regulation of Magical Creatures. Mr. Weasley filled out a complaint about Nargles tearing up the ductwork somewhere in the building and had Hermione sign her name at the bottom. The woman at the desk chatted to them endlessly about her nephew’s wedding until Mr. Weasley handed her the request and she saw what it was for. She grimaced, checking each response three times, as though she were trying to find the weak spot. "You are requesting immediate action due to imminent destruction – by  _Nargles_  - of an historically significant balustrade."  
  
"Correct."  
  
She licked her lips uncertainly.  "I was not aware that any historically significant architecture survived the fires in 1867 in levels thirteen through twenty."  
  
"Its historical status is provisional. Pending further inquiries." For a moment it looked like they were going to have a standoff, but the woman shook her head disgustedly and said, "This seems to be in order." She pulled out two small stamps. "Approved," said one in lime green, and below it, "Pending Inquiries."  
   
Harry was growing impatient.  
  
"What are we  _doing_? They could be…  _torturing_  him, or something, and you've got us running around doing paperwork!"  
  
"Harry," Mr. Weasley said, putting a hand on his shoulder. " _Trust the system_. Or if you can't, at least trust me." And because Harry did trust him, he swallowed his resentment and followed Mr. Weasley down another featureless hallway.  
  
Hermione was trying to formulate a cogent argument. "I don't understand," she said with and edge of hopelessness in her voice. "Nargles aren't even real!" Mr. Weasley snorted at her and shook his head. "Of course they're not. The very idea. But from a  _procedural_  standpoint, you see, it doesn’t actually matter." She goggled at him. "Hermione," he said, stopping to address her properly. "The magical world’s a finicky sort of place. One day everybody’s saying a thing is imaginary, and the next day it turns up in Islington. Rigid legal definitions of 'real' and 'not real' just create extra paperwork, and I will tell you, as much as I appreciate the work of this fine body, the paperwork is already a bit over the top." He looked at them uncomfortably, as though he wasn't quite sure he should be admitting this. "Ministry policy is to simply treat every properly formatted complaint from a witch or wizard of legal age as legitimate, until proven otherwise."  
  
"But that's - what does  _formatting_  have to do with whether something is true or not?"  
  
"Damned if I know."  
  
On the third floor they acquired several temporary visitors' badges (which apparently allowed one to access the players' hall of fame and entitled them to a free ice cream from the cafeteria) along with three miniature snitches charmed to fly around the room and back to their owners after a few minutes. “You hold onto those, Ron,” his father said.

On the ninth floor Ron filled out forms requesting maintenance work on a door. After a few sidelong glances, the wizard at the desk - Hidlebrogg, according to his name tag - winked at Mr. Weasley and pressed a gold sticker into the corner of a small blank space near the bottom.   
  
_Expedited._  
  
"Nearly there," Mr. Weasley chirped as they huffed up the stairs to the Ministry's official Owlery.   
  
"Harry," he said, "I need you to write a letter demanding the balustrades on 11G be formally recognized as an historical landmark. Say they were used as secret passageways for the Goblin Insurrection of – oh, say, 1642." Hermione muttered disconsolately to herself.

"Shouldn't we have done this earlier?" said Harry. His throat was still sore but his voice was nearly back to normal.  
  
"You’d  _think_  so, wouldn’t you? But in fact,  _that_ would have triggered a formal tribunal to debate the merits of your claim before granting provisional status. The fact that another department will have already requested documentation will cause the entire thing to be -"  
  
"Expedited?"  
  
"Precisely."  
  
At 1:15 p.m., tired and impatient, they made their way to the office of Probationary and Interrogative Services Subdivision, 11F. Along the way they acquired an aged maintenance wizard called Shad, who doddered along behind them with an air of habitual exasperation, as though he was only putting up with this sort of thing because retirement was right around the corner. He kept going until he reached 11G, where he set down with his tools and began patiently cutting a tiny round hole into the wall using a utility spell.   
  
"Just a mo’," he wheezed, apparently out of breath from the walk from the elevator. He turned to rifle through the contents of his toolbox, at which point Ron, at his father's urging, took the miniature snitches out of his pocket and stuffed them through the hole in the wall.  
  
The man turned round again with a thing that looked like a cross between a water meter and a divining rod. He stuck it in the opening he'd made, twisting and fidgeting before tapping it with his wand. It hummed and lit up immediately. "Agh," he said, wheezing. "We’ll ‘ave to ‘ave her down, then... sumfin's a-goin’ on."

With quiet precision, he blasted a five-foot-wide hole in the wall. The dust cleared. Draco gaped at them through the opening, and Harry's breath caught.   
  
"Hullo," said Harry, feeling like someone had dropped a bowling ball on his chest.  
  
" _Harry_?" Draco looked incredulous. He grabbed hold of the corner of a polished steel table nearby as though for support, eyes suspicious, mouth drawn down into an angry little frown.  

“Hi,” said Hermione, poking her head through the gap in the wall. Ron scowled at him but raised a hand in greeting.

“Granger,” he nodded stiffly, confused. “Weasley.”

Draco looked... irritated, maybe. Tired, certainly. But then he bit his lip, a look that Harry recognized from his newly-recovered memories, and Harry couldn't help himself. He crossed the floor in a few quick steps and pulled Draco into a careful embrace, fitting their bodies together shoulder to hip, burying his face in Draco's neck with shaking hands and a sigh of relief. Whatever had happened between them, he had found him - he would keep him safe.

Draco went rigid for a moment, surprised - but then he softened, letting out a breath that sounded like he'd been holding it in for months. "Harry?" he whispered again, small but somehow hopeful. “What are you doing here?” Harry felt Draco's fingers clutching the back of his shirt, warm breath against his ear. “Looking for you,” Harry whispered. It felt like they should be having this conversation in private, but there was nothing they could do about it now. “I didn’t know you were – something happened to my memory.” He wanted to explain, but he didn’t know how. His throat hurt from trying to talk.   
  
Heavy steps clattered on the cold stone floors, and somebody burst through the door. "What in Petrarch's pantheon do you think you're doing!" A blue-eyed Auror with a rather severe haircut had suddenly appeared, wild-haired, fuming.

“Hands visible, please!” the man screeched, but nobody was paying him any mind. "And what've you done to my wall? You. Close that up immediately." He pointed at Mr. Weasley. 

Arthur cut in cheerfully “We'd be happy to help normally, but I'm afraid we can't. The historical preservation team has to be consulted on repairs to that hallway. Hadn't you heard?" A memo flapped into the room through the gap in the wall and fluttered by the Auror's head, where it unfolded itself and politely informed him about the provisional historical status of the balustrades. The man looked as if he were about to scream.

“What? When?” Draco demanded, still whispering, gripping Harry's waist tightly.

 “Hmm?” Harry said.

 Draco looked as if he wanted to hex him. “ _When_ ,” he hissed, “did someone tamper with your memory?”

 Harry liked his mouth. Had Harry always liked his mouth? “Oh! I... don’t remember, actually. Amnesia?” He smiled at his own little joke. Draco pinched him and Harry yelped.

The Auror took his wand out and started pointing it impatiently at each of them, which, firstly, made them all feel a bit unsafe, and secondly, reminded Harry that someone was responsible for what had been done to him and Draco.  Harry wheeled around to give the Auror a look that could’ve cut glass. This would have been more dramatic if Harry had not still been cuddling Draco with one arm, but he would work with what he had. "What did you do to him?"  
   
The man waved a hand at Harry dismissively. "That’s none of your concern! That boy you are… handling...  is concealing the whereabouts of several known Death Eaters. Probably. We have followed procedural safeguards pertaining to interrogative practice! We have – and anyway," he sniffed. "You can't just go knocking down walls, all higglety-pigglety. What would happen if everybody did that?"  
  
Harry turned to Draco, genuinely worried. "Is that true? About Death Eaters?"  
  
Draco rolled his eyes and Harry had the strangest impression that this was his way of expressing affection. "Of course not. Idiot." Harry didn't know if "Idiot" was directed at him or the Auror, but he found that he didn't mind either way.  
  
"It  _is_  true!" The Auror stamped his foot like a toddler railing against naptime.  
  
"It absolutely  _is_   _not_."

 "Is so."  
  
"Is not!"

“Yes,  _yes_  it is!” the man howled, and Draco rolled his eyes again. “I have been extremely cooperative with your inquiries,” Draco said, crisply and with disdain.

"Excuse me. How do you know he's concealing anything?" said Hermione. Harry was suddenly, immensely relieved that she was there. He was also slightly embarrassed.  
  
"He is extremely skilled in occlumency!"  
  
Harry pulled back again slightly and pushed the hair out of Draco’s eyes, trying to look him in the face, but Draco wouldn’t meet his eye. "Are you?" He felt a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "I could never get the hang of it, myself." And the look Draco gave him then, confused and almost hopeful, hammered in his chest like an invocation. Harry  _remembered_  this - not a word or an event or even an image sprang to mind, but somewhere deep down in his nervous system he recognized the terrifying, onrushing joy that flooded his system now, coursing through his elbows and ankles, bleeding down his spine, spilling into the tips of his toes, and he knew that he had been - that he still was, somehow - in love.  
  
Which meant that everything would be fine.  
  
"We have been questioning him for quite some time. He has been… cooperative. In small ways. But there is a knot of information he is protecting, which we are certain will give us the whereabouts of several Death Eaters still at large."  
  
“How did you get authorization for that sort of interrogation?" said Hermione in her barrister's voice - crisp, businesslike. Subtly accusatory.  
  
"I, I, er-" The man brought a long, embroidered sleeve to his face to wipe away a bead of sweat. "It was a special dispensation. The situation required-"  
  
"I'm sorry, what I meant was how did  _you_  get authorization. Legilimency for the purposes of interrogation requires special training, I believe, and your uniform seems to indicate -"  
  
"It was," he squeaked, "a departmental dispensation! It extended - I am sure it should extend to every officer involved in the case!"  
  
Ron coughed and whispered something into her ear that made her stand up a little straighter. "And that includes filing clerks, does it?"  
  
The man went purple with rage.  
  
"That," he hissed, "is only a temporary reassignment of duties." He looked uncertain now. "There was a mix-up regarding some preschool-aged Muggles and a… flesh-eating… magical horse." He waved a hand as if to say that the incident had been wildly overblown. "I will be fully reinstated once I prove that I still know what I'm doing! Once this sniveling little…" He pointed his wand at Draco, lip curled in disdain. "Miscreant. Gives me the information I require."

"I’ve told you, I don't  _know_  anything!"  
  
"Liar!"  
  
"I am entitled to a modicum of privacy!"

"I'll entitle you to a boot straight up your-"  
  
“ _Please_ ,” said Mr. Weasley in his most soothing bureaucratic tone of voice. “Let’s calm down, shall we? I’m sure we can all agree –”

“You’ve no right to be here!” It sounded like he was trying to be assertive, but it came out as a squeak. Mr. Weasley pulled a stack of forms out of his coat pocket. “Ah, yes. About that,” he said politely, and began explaining the convoluted process involved in and Inter-Departmental Interrogative Officer Supervisory Review. It appeared to be some sort of disciplinary process for officers who had violated the _spirit_ of Ministry procedure without technically violating any legal boundary. Mr. Weasley was smiling, but from the way the man’s face crumpled Harry understood that the outlook was pretty grim. Harry made a note to himself to send Gladys a box of chocolates. 

“ _When_ ,” Draco whispered again, reeling Harry back in to press him against his chest. “Come _on_. What do you remember?” Harry hummed a little at the renewed contact and took a mental note: Draco's no-nonsense voice was oddly compelling.

 “Look, I really don't know. I'm sorry,” he said. “Hermione says it might take a few weeks for everything to come back. Does it matter?”

 Draco gritted his teeth. “It –  _yes,_ it matters. What is the last thing you remember? The last clear, definite memory, with a date you can be sure about?”

Harry racked his brain for anything concrete. It was hard to pin the memories down, to lay them in any precise order or even remember where he’d been at the time. “My birthday, I guess? There’s a few things that happened right after, but that one seems to be… intact.” Draco pulled away abruptly. It had been the wrong thing to say. “That was  _two weeks ago_. You haven’t spoken to me in months.” Harry frowned. It  _felt_  like it had been longer, but then… he did faintly remember a party, and there had been cake, so… birthday? It was strange to have some of his memories papered over and some still right where they belonged. “No, wait,” he said, biting his lip. “That’s… I think it must have been… the one before that?” His mouth felt dry. Could he have lost an entire year’s worth of memories? Hermione had said he’d spent eight months at the rehabilitation center, and most of that still seemed to be missing. Why had nobody else noticed?

There was a sharp intake of breath, and Draco pulled him back to his chest, running long fingers through his hair. “Oh,” was all Draco managed to say, his voice choked and trembling. “I - all right.”

A heavy ornamental stapler flew right past Harry’s ear, crashing into a row of chairs that had been stacked on top of one another along the far wall as though the room were being used for storage as well as interrogation. It appeared that the conversation between Mr. Weasley and the filing clerk had taken a turn.

“I will feed your innards to a rabid Erkling!”

“For heaven’s sake, Auror…” Mr. Weasley squinted at his name badge. “Sponge?”

“Spon-gue,” the man corrected.

“Gazuntheit. I think you’re taking this a bit personally, young man. The internal auditing team is known for their thoroughness and attention to procedure. I’m sure there’s nothing to -”

“I will rain down fire on your very favorite pub!” the man squawked, and Mr. Weasley sighed.

Luckily, Ron and Hermione had gone to get backup.

“Gentlemen!" boomed the voice of the security chief, stepping gingerly through the hole in the wall. "That is quite enough. Inter-departmental dueling is not allowed except under section twenty-two – and I’m sure none of us wants to go  _that_ route. There are clear protocol-"  
  
Harry broke in. "Sir! This man has been interrogated illegally and held without cause. What sort of protocol do you have for that?" He untangled their arms and legs and tried his best to look dignified.  
  
The security chief turned and regarded Harry sullenly. "Oh, all right," he grumbled, and conjured a small pad of paper and a sharp, aggressive-looking quill that took angry notes for him while he spoke. "Name," he barked, and Harry felt his shoulders hunch up protectively. "Harry… Potter?" The quill stabbed irritably at the page. "Profession?" Harry cleared his throat. "Er… none?" The man scowled at him as though this was the most unacceptable response imaginable. "I start training next week for the Auror program." The man sneered at this, as though he didn’t believe Harry would be up to the job, but said nothing. "Right. And I take it that you have A Complaint?" In his mouth the word "complaint" took on roughly the same quality as "hives" or "a liquefied pigeon."  
  
"I- yes," he squeaked. The man tapped his boot heavily. "This… filing clerk… has illegally detained my -  _this_  man, here, in order to carry out unauthorised interrogations. He’s not qualified to interrogate anyone, anyway, and… can’t you arrest him for that?"  
  
The man shook his head at Sponge and clucked his tongue like a mother hen. "Frances, Frances," he lamented in tones of disgust. "What've you done now?"   
  
"I have a special dispensation!"  
  
The guard shut his eyes, puffed out chest and let the air go quietly like he was practicing his anger management techniques. " _How_  special?"  
  
"I have permission from the Tertiary Acting Administrative Aide to the Minister!" He scurried out of the room and returned half a minute later with paperwork in hand.   
  
The documentation was, unfortunately, impeccable. "Sorry," the security chief said with a shrug. "Everything appears to be in order on his end. Mr. Malfoy here’s required to take part in the investigation until the officer in question is satisfied."  
  
"But he hasn't  _done_  anything!" Probably, Harry thought. Hopefully. "You can't arrest somebody just because they  _might_  know something!"  
  
"Arrest him? Hold on now! Certainly not, no, nothing like that going on here. There is a legal distinction between detainment and arrest. He can even go home at night if he likes, so long as a member of the community's willing to take responsibility for him. Legal custodian, like."  
  
Harry's heart leapt. "He can stay with me! I'll be his… whatever. Responsible party." Draco looked up at him with a look of such unguarded affection -  
  
"Has to be kin, I'm afraid."  
  
Mr. Weasley cleared his throat, and when Harry looked over to him he was gesturing to his wrist.  
  
"Right." Harry blushed, suddenly unsure of himself. "Right." The words were stuck in his throat. "I'm kin," he said, and showed the man his wrist. Draco stifled a sound of surprise, and when Harry looked at him he was staring at the ceiling, his jaw tight, arms crossed over his chest. The man looked between the two of them with renewed interest. He checked Draco's wrist to confirm.  
  
"Fair enough. Have him back by 8 a.m. sharp, and make sure he doesn't engage in any illegal activities whilst under your supervision. Our Emmie will have you signs some forms at the front desk. If there's nothing else, I'm late for a staff meeting." After a pause the man nodded, turned around and marched back out the gaping hole in the wall.

Harry walked over, took both of Draco's hands, and squeezed. "I know this is all a bit sudden." A giggle nearly escaped Malfoy's lips, but he tamped down on it immediately.  His face assumed a look of polite boredom.  
  
"Would you, Draco Malfoy - like to eat dim sum on my ratty couch and tell me what the fuck happened the last twelve months?"  
  
"Oh, all right,” he said. “I did have other plans for the evening.” He glanced around at the interrogation room and its pile of ruined chairs. "But I suppose I could rearrange my schedule."  
  
Harry beamed. "Let's go."

“You all right, there?” said Ron, glaring at Draco but addressing himself to Harry. “You sure this is… fine?”

“Yeah,” said Harry, smiling.

“So. You’re definitely gay, then?”

Hermione cleared her throat.

“Pretty sure.”

“Nice to see you, Granger,” said Draco, sounding anxious. “Heard you were going to law school.” She nodded at him. Trying, at least. 

Ron groaned and reached out to shake Draco’s hand. “Fine. Hermione says we have to let you come round for dinner sometimes. Harry, we’re going to that pub you like if you change your mind about Ferret Face. Malfoy,” he said. “Don’t cock it up.” 

On the threshold to Sponge’s office, Draco stopped abruptly. "Harry," he said. “You told Weasley we were - ah.”

“Um. Yeah?”

“And Granger.”

“Well, yes. They’re my friends.”

Draco turned and looked at the wall for about ten seconds. “And the security guard.”

“Did you not want anybody to know about us?” said Harry, hurt.

“ _You_  didn’t want anybody to know,” Draco spat back. “You – before. You said we should wait, keep it out of the press for as long as we could. And then when you were discharged and I didn’t hear from you for months, I thought you’d just. Changed your mind about the whole thing.”  
  
Harry was stunned. “Fuck’s sake. You put up with that sort of thing from me, do you?” He wanted Draco to smile at that, but he couldn't read his expression. "Listen. I'm sorry," he said, "for being terrible at this. I don’t want it to be a secret. We can do a whole ceremony if you like, giant pink taffeta bows and a horse and carriage and those chocolates that look like little golden snitches. If your mum insists on something more traditional, I can even be the one in the dress."  
  
This, at least, surprised a laugh from Draco.

"Sponge," he called suddenly, and the man came in clutching an armful of papers, fuming. "Auror Sponge. I would prefer not to return to this poorly lit, unhygienic cesspool of a department tomorrow morning at eight. So. I am prepared to submit to questioning by Legilemency, if you wish. I sincerely doubt that the information I've been holding onto will be of any use to your investigation, but then, I am not an expert in criminal law."  
  
The man's face looked blank. He dumped the files on his desk, stood up straight, and pointed at the ruined interrogation room. “Well, all right! Glad you've come to your senses. Come right this way,” he said, and they left Harry alone waiting room, bewildered.

Forty-two minutes later Draco emerged looking flushed and extremely pleased with himself. Mr. Sponge emerged more slowly, swallowing huge gulps of air like a suffocating goldfish. "Are you all right?" Harry asked the man. The man nodded miserably, lip quivering as though he was about to cry, and sat down to stare at his mountain of unfinished paperwork.  
  
"He's fine," said Draco, grabbing Harry by the wrist, and dragged him out the door and into the atrium. People were staring, but Harry thought that was to be expected. "Let me tell you about the time we snuck out of the moderate-risk ward on a Sunday afternoon to escape the travesty of artificially sweetened non-dairy whipped cream," Draco said, loudly enough to be heard by everyone within 20 meters, and Harry found at once that he didn't really care if the filing clerk was having a bad day.

 

***

  
Three hours later they were, as promised, sitting on Harry's shitty but comfortable sofa with Draco's legs draped over him. This was because Draco said that Harry was basically a small portable furnace, and he wasn't going to catch his death in the house of his mother's line. Harry leaned over and kissed Draco softly on the mouth. Just once. Just to see what it was like.   
  
Draco froze, but he didn't say anything snide. He just looked at Harry, eyes soft and worried, and then slipped his fingers into the short hairs at the base of Harry's neck, pulling him closer, capturing his mouth with a tenderness that Harry would not have expected. It was like drowning, but in reverse: the pain in Harry's chest dispersed. His whole body felt warm and light and his limbs went jellyish, and for the first time in a very long while, he could breathe.  
  
They kissed for a while. Then, when Draco pulled Harry down on top of him and mouthed at his throat and jaw, Harry ground against him and spoke to him in breathless half-words, and just when everything had gotten really, wonderfully intense, Draco pushed him away and got up suddenly, angry or overwhelmed or confused. It was hard to tell.

"What is this?” Draco demanded.

“I, erm… foreplay?”

“Why did you even come looking for me? You hardly remember anything at all. Why would you blow down a fucking wall, of all things?”  
  
Harry bit his cheek. "Shad took down the wall, actually. You’re upset because I wanted to make sure you were all right?"  
  
"It took me  _three months_ , Potter,” he said, sounding hysterical, “three months of mortifying, sincere conversations and bringing you tea and bleeding all my childhood trauma and insecurities all over you, just to convince you I wasn't actively plotting your death! And now you've got a fistful of random memories and a spell wrapped around your wrist, and suddenly it's cuddling and wedding announcements and you’re sticking your tongue right inside my fucking ear!"

“Am I making this too easy for you?”

Draco growled in frustration. “No! I’m – yes. Sort of. Shut up.”

That made sense, Harry thought. “You think because I forgot about you, that I’d go back to being the same person I was before. That I should feel the way about you that I did back then. But I’m different, now – and you are, too – even if I don’t remember how either of us got this way. When I remembered you, I didn’t  _feel_  angry or confused, I just  _wanted_ you.” He knew he was saying it wrong. “It’s – it’s like if a house gets destroyed in a flood. Just because you were away on holiday when it happened, just ‘cos you didn’t  _see_  it get washed into to sea, that doesn’t change what happened to the house. I can’t change back into somebody who doesn’t love you. I don’t think it works that way.”

Draco came and sat down on the couch, defeated. “I know,” said Draco, looking disgusted with himself. "I hate you for doing this to me."

Harry slid his hand into Draco’s and traced a line up and down the outside of his thumb. The couch creaked as he leaned in and lay his head down on Draco’s shoulder. They weren’t looking one another in the eye. It felt safer that way.

"For letting you fall in love with me?"

"That, yes. And for introducing me to that horrible Muggle television show. The things that Doctor gets up to with Muggles in tow are extremely disturbing. He should’ve been brought before the Wizengamot ages ago.”

“He's  _fictional_.”

 “He doesn’t _look_ fictional." He dropped his head, nuzzling at Harry’s chest like an impatient cat. Harry could feel his stomach clench and relax as Draco’s breath warmed the fabric of his sweater.

"Mmm." He leaned back and ran his fingers through Draco's hair.

"Draco?"

"Yes?" His voice was soft and muffled.

“What did you tell that Auror so he'd leave us alone? He seemed a little… disappointed."

Draco rolled over so that his head was in Harry's lap and he was staring up at him, smiling wickedly. He pulled Harry's head down and whispered something into his ear.

Harry felt himself flush all over. " _Oh._ "

"Oh."

 "So when you said it was a matter of privacy-"

"I meant _yours_ ," he said. "Mine as well, I suppose, but I'm less likely to have an article written about my sexual fetishes."

Harry covered his face with both hands. "I, erm. I didn't even know I knew how to…  _do_  that."  
  
"Oh yes. You have a _gift_."

A moment passed. "Can we try it now?"

Draco snorted, but his eyes were dark and intense. "If you like." And then Harry kissed him, hard and wet and desperate, and dragged him up to their bedroom.

Pressed up against a convenient piece of furniture (hard to tell what kind), Harry panted into Draco's mouth, fumbling impatiently with the row of neat but infuriating buttons on his trousers. "What if I'm not any good at it, anymore? What if I can't do it right?"

Draco undid the last two buttons himself and kicked his trousers off, stumbling backwards toward the bed, pulling Harry by the hand. He lay back, took Harry's hand and tucked it snugly inside of the hem of his ridiculously expensive-looking boxers, which turned out to be made of something that felt like silk but reflected the stars from  the window. Harry thrilled at the heat of Draco’s body beneath. He took firm hold, marveling at the way Draco shivered and tensed at Harry’s touch. He started stroking Draco, hard and fast, and Draco made a sound that Harry was suddenly in a hurry to hear again. Harry's breath caught. If he was this excited already, how was he ever going last long enough to – to –  
  
"I wouldn't worry," whispered Draco, reading his mind. He sounded breathless but still unbelievably smug. "It's like –  _mmm_ – riding a bicycle. Once you learn how to do it, you never really forget."


End file.
